The United Nations children's agency is scaling up its assistance to thousands of Syrian refugee children and their families in the Kurdistan region of Iraq where tens of thousands of families arrived in recent weeks.

A plane carrying 100 tonnes of supplies - including water tanks, latrine equipment, school materials and temporary schools - landed yesterday evening in Erbil, the UN Children's Fund said in a news release.

The supplies were urgently airlifted from UNICEF's global supply warehouse in Copenhagen, Denmark, to respond to the growing needs of Syrian refugees in Iraq, who now number more than 200,000.

According to the UN agency, some 50,000 refugees arrived in the last two and a half weeks, half of whom were children.